The treatment of blood-borne disease by pharmacological intervention is limited by pathogen resistance and drug toxicity; the drugs used to attack pathogens are often also toxic to healthy human cells and tissues. Pharmaceutical intervention is also limited by the constant and rapid evolution of pathogens, especially bacteria, to adapt and become resistant to drugs. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (“MRSA”) is especially pernicious and is gaining national and worldwide attention as a priority for disease control efforts. A 2007 report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimated the number of MRSA infections in hospitals doubled nationwide, from approximately 127,000 in 1999 to 278,000 in 2005, while at the same time annual deaths increased from 11,000 to more than 17,000. Klein E, Smith D L, Laxminarayan R (2007), “Hospitalizations and Deaths Caused by Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, United States, 1999-2005,” Emerg. Infect. Dis. 13(12):1840-6. However, most large pharmaceutical companies in the United States have abandoned basic research and development of new antibiotic drugs and are focusing their research and development efforts elsewhere, despite the ever growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
Accordingly, there is a need to develop systems and methods to efficiently and effectively treat blood-borne diseases while minimizing toxicity to the patient. There is also a need in the art for methods of combating resistant pathogens in a patient, either by remodeling currently existing pharmaceutical interventions and/or by developing new and effective drugs and/or physical agents. Also needed are systems and methods to evaluate the efficacy of new antimicrobial drugs and physical agents under specific conditions, as well as to evaluate the safe use of antimicrobial drugs and treatment methods that were previously found to be effective against microbial pathogens but that were deemed too toxic for in vivo use.